This is Just stuff I find on various echnologies ranging from databases to Cloud related tech. This Blog will have topics and content based on things i learn.
I can also be found at http://www.twitter.com/fuadar

Monday, July 10, 2017

The Recovery Appliance or ZDLRA is a great way to ensure consistent Backup and Recovery of you Oracle Database but as DBA's we often want to see what is happening Behind the Covers. As with every Oracle Product there is a GUI (Enterprise Manager) or Command line based environment.
The ZDLRA Development team just released a very nifty little script that is available via

In This case this is the release of 12.1.1.1.8 that was released on 22nd of May

The you will see the General State of the system and in a Healthy Environment. there will be idling schedulers and the oldest work will be displayed. Typically the oldest work should be be a couple of hours /days old . If not that might point to some discrepancy and an SR should be opened to evaluate this situation

Next Section Displays the State of Storage on the Recovery Appliance and can be used as a measure of understanding how much space has been used on the Recovery Appliance.

TOTAL_SPACE USED_SPACEFREESPACE FREESPACE_GOAL

------------- ------------- ------------- --------------

596048.371 321061.930 274986.051 5960.484

The next Sections include Status of Replication Server and Task History for the last day. This is particularly helpful to assess how things are running.

There are also sections that include that state of each Database and how many days of Backups are available , Locally and replicated as well as sections that show all the incidents in the system and if any config changes were made to the system that were non default.

While Enterprise Manager is still the preferred way of ensuring you see , manage and get alerted on the Recovery Appliance. This handy little script is a nice way to see the overall status a Recovery Appliance really quickly

Friday, May 05, 2017

Oracle ZDLRA or Zero
Data loss Recovery Appliance allows for transporting redo from the protected
database and stores it securely inside the Recovery Appliance. This allows for
near zero Recovery Point Objectives to be met.

Setting up Real time
redo Transport involves setting up a wallet and redo_transport_user parameter to the virtual private catalog user
as well as definition and archive log destination that points to the Recovery
Appliance . This allows redo to be shipped to the Appliance and Stored for
future restores and recoveries.

If the Database
Environment does not have an associated Standby , this procedure is very simple
and Enterprise manager can handle the setup or it can be done easily via
command line as described here in the documentation.
Since we are changing the redo_transport_user , this brings in some interesting
considerations for standby databases.

The Default Behavior
for redo shipping to a standby database
uses sys as the user that is used for transport and apply unless there is a value in redo_transport_user. The REDO_TRANSPORT_USER database
initialization parameter can be used to select a different user password for
redo transport authentication by setting this parameter to the name of any user
who has been granted the SYSOPER privilege. This User will need to be created
in the protected database and needs to be exactly the same as the Virtual
Private Catalog user that has been created on the Recovery Appliance Catalog.
The procedure to setup a protected database that is a part of a dataguard
configuration is detailed in the Whitepaper here.

With Enterprise
Manager 13.2 this procedure has now been automated and is accessible via the
Data guard administration menu

In the Dataguard
Administration screen you will see a button to add the Recovery Appliance

The Add Recovery
Appliance screen will ask you for the Recovery Appliance to configure with this
protected database and since this is a standby will provide details on what
will happen

You will need to
provide Host credentials for the Primary and Standby Databases. This will
result in a Job being submitted to perform the tasks

You can then view
the Status of this procedure

The End result will
be the Protected Database as well as the Standby Database configured along with
the Recovery Appliance.

The Enterprise Manager team is hard at working on developing new features and hopefully this new feature will allow for easier and faster configurations of Protected Databases that also have a standby associated with them.

Monday, January 02, 2017

It's the start of a new year , and as with all new years it's time to prepare and start learning a fresh. Oracle as a database , as a technology , as a field is constantly being update from being a database to a platform to a cloud provider . Learning is the core of what we thrive to do . as technology evolves , the opportunities to learn increase .

This year i had the pleasure to emerse myself to technologies that spanned between on-premises and the cloud and i hope to continue my learning curve